| Another Pathetic Lifeform - Part 2 By Marnie Glad as he was to have been handed an excuse - no, a command - to leave the party, Qui-Gon found himself concerned that they'd got off too lightly. The Governor could have easily insisted they stay, and made them the butt of jokes and insults all evening. He didn't seem like the kind of man to let such an opportunity slip by unintentionally. Some sort of plan then? In the centre of the illuminated manuscript of planting there was a perfectly round pool, flat and golden in the windless evening as if one of the moons had drowned there. Around it was a semi-circular marble bench, and opposite this a small grotto lined with shells. Something small and dark moved there - stretching out a limb and subsiding. At first sight Qui-Gon thought it was a lost dog. But dogs do not radiate emptiness through the Force. Whatever it was, its consciousness skated on a thin film of ice above desolation. It was not aware of the sheer depths of its neediness. Something - the Force perhaps, or perhaps only his own compassion - urged him forward. He knew the instant it saw them; the shadow locked into terrified immobility, and raw, unshielded fear went through his mind like a spike. "Stay here, Gem." No sense in alarming it with two of them, but nothing should live in that much fear. He had to help. Holding his hands palm out, Qui-Gon moved slowly to put the moons' glitter behind himself so that he could see. When he was close enough he crouched down to try and look less huge to it. Could be some kind of guard-creature, he warned himself, Small, but poisonous. Be wary. So he was unprepared when the shadows shifted, and the tight bundle of darkness revealed itself to be an infant child. In nightclothes, with his chubby hands locked around his knees, the toddler looked up at Qui-Gon through eyes which were the colour of ice. Far too miserable even to cry. "Oh..." Qui-Gon reeled. The boy felt to his senses like the victim of atrocity or war - shocked numb - but there was no mark on the clean, pale skin. No sign of violence. "Little one, what's the matter?" "You're not my daddy." It was an accusation, fierce, backed with all the ache of that empty place inside him. "No. But I can help. It's what I do." "I want my daddy!" Qui-Gon knelt, considering. Perhaps the boy's father had recently died? That almost fitted what he sensed here, except that he would have expected more confusion. He would also have expected a search by now. How could the child be alone, here, in the middle of the night? "He said he'd come. 'm not allowed to go to sleep until he says night-night. And 'm tired. He said he'd come." Like a small star, the child shone with Force-sensitivity. Qui-Gon could feel his spirit desperately reaching out for the tendrils of life around him, falling back into profound isolation. He had the speech patterns of a Force-Adept also - two or three years older than his biological age. A Force-sensitive child, waiting in the gardens for his father to come. "Are you the Governor's son?" "'m Lysander." There was a crack in the cold facade, and the lower lip wobbled slightly. Then, as if he felt betrayed by his own weakness, the threat of tears turned into a glare. "'m not allowed to talk to you. 'm not allowed to talk to anyone." The Governor's son, and the man was exercising his power-play on his own child; leaving him outside to wait, and wait, in the darkness, until he deigned to leave his party to come to him. Qui-Gon released his anger with some difficulty and forced a small laugh at the toddler's exaggeration. "Well, I'm a Jedi. That makes me a servant. You're allowed to talk to the servants, aren't you?" The lip tremble again, and he bowed his head, black hair like spilled ink across his round, smooth cheek. "Not allowed to talk to anyone 'cept my daddy." A coldness began in Qui-Gon's chest, touched his heart and spread upwards. "Your mother?" he asked, in horror, knowing now who had dug the void at the centre of the boy's soul. "Your nurse? Friends?" "No-one, 'cept daddy." Nosily, G'emela had sidled to his shoulder. "Does he mean what I think?" she whispered, seizing Qui-Gon's elbow in a bruising grip, "Literally? He's not allowed to interact with anyone? Kids can die from that. Remember on...?" He did remember. An evil experiment on Nal-Hutta: Three human children shut in separate rooms, fed and watered remotely - given everything they needed to live, except for love. They had all perished. "This is different." He had to shut his eyes and struggle through the 'Arch of Peace' meditation before he could forget how furious he was. His pity for the Governor snuffed out under the terrible knowledge of what he'd done. "The Governor has made himself the only source of attention - of any kind - in the child's world. He's not seeking to kill him, only to ensure his base and utter devotion. It's a control mechanism." "Bastard!" said Gem, bitterly. "Indeed." While they spoke, Lysander had watched his toes, wriggling them in the damp moss on which he sat. From time to time he would slide a glimpse their way, and then cringe, as if he knew he was doing something bad. The small arms and legs were covered with goosebumps as the night turned chill. If Qui-Gon interfered, goodness knew what punishments might be visited on the child, but he could no more have turned away from this than levitate the Jedi Temple. "I think your daddy can't get away from all those important people. Come on, let's take you to bed." Very slowly, as he might approach a wild animal, Qui-Gon stretched out a hand and wiped the glossy hair away from Lysander's eyes. Through the Force it was like touching something so cold his skin froze to it. For a moment he was lost in the almost vampiric desperation with which Lysander's aura clung and pulled on his. As if a lifetime's affection was being demanded of him now and devoured in one gulp. "Oh!" the boy's pale blue eyes lifted, wide and awe-struck. "You're all light and shiny." Qui-Gon took his hand away and hugged himself, feeling an ache down his arm as if he had been drained of several pints of blood. He had caught a glimpse of the boy's soul in that moment of communion, and found it bleak. In the country of Lysander's mind his father was a volcano, dominating the landscape, shrouded in mist. Sometimes the clouds moved, revealing fertile soil where the child could put down roots. Then it would be gone in a roil of smoke and lava, and he would find himself alone, and burnt. Qui-Gon got up, extended a hand down to the boy, who looked at it blankly. No-one had held his hand before. "Master?" G'emela's look of concern was an accusation, "Are you getting involved again? We're never going to get real missions at this rate." "He's strong in the Force, Gem, and young enough to be accepted as an initiate. I have a legitimate reason for being involved." Nothing to do with wanting to heal this damage, or give the boy some of the love he so sorely needed. Nothing to do with wanting to remove an innocent child from a household of deliberate abuse. Those were reasons the Council would not accept or even acknowledge. They were reasons he would keep to himself. Though from Gem's snort and sudden silence, he knew they had been heard by someone. ***** The boy's rooms were light, airy, opening onto the gardens. They smelled of ambergris and madderley, and the polished metal floors were alive with a scuttle of droids. In their antiseptic sterility Qui-Gon - mud on his boots, grass-stained knees, dew in his hair - felt like dirt. He was a disease-carrier, something which should be wiped away. The spacious, tasteful rooms with their white furniture had all the welcoming charm of a morgue. A DS90 droid scrubbed the floor behind him even as he walked. Lysander's bed too was as white as snow, smooth as ice. He broke down at the door "No! No! No bed. Don't want bed!" He was attended, Qui-Gon saw with horror, by medical droids; voiceless, efficient, who stripped him of the damp pajamas, put him into new ones with all the tenderness of a meat-packing line. Uninvited - since their touch Lysander seemed to have accepted his presence with no more questions - Qui-Gon went through into the bedroom, stood with his head tilted, listening to the aura. Once, as a very young initiate, he had woken in his room, gone to the door and opened it, only to find a pure, white, nothingness on the other side. Stricken, he rushed to the window, flung back shutters, to find the same pale void. A terror he had no name for had swept through him at the knowledge that he alone survived while the rest of the universe had ceased to be. Just him. When he had woken truly, he was screaming. Lysander's bedroom was that nightmare given flesh. "You can't sleep in here." He grabbed an armful of bedding and paced the palatial apartments until he found a place where there was some residue of warmth. It was a store cupboard, where - high out of Lysander's reach - the most expensive and beautiful toys were ranked deep as in a shop, gleaming. Another stolen memory. The Governor coming here every afternoon at 3pm, taking the toys down and watching his son play. Lysander's small soul swelling with adulation as his father explained how expensive this new present was; how Lysander had more toys than anyone else, and this meant he was more important than anyone else. It must be true, because his daddy had smiled when he said it. A poisonous mixture of pride and avarice, laced through with some feeble glimmers of affection, but still it was the only place in the suite which was not an aching void. "There." He knelt down by the nest of bedding, expecting more protests. Lysander had been watching him statue-like, with a stillness uncanny in a two-year old. Now he smiled - a flash of radiance like the sun reflected from a pool of mercury. "No bed?" The intensity of his joy was almost painful. "Sleep here?" "Yes, sleep here." He tumbled onto the quilts, eyes squeezed shut in bliss. Relief like a shout, filling the room. Immediately, the DS droids began to converge on the 'mess', trying to tidy away the boy's small comfort. "No! It's mine. Leave it alone!" The mood swings of a normal two-year-old could be frightening, Qui-Gon thought, but this boy's were cataclysmic. Dark rose up from the pit of desolation inside him, spread to his heart, his mind. The air of the room became heavy and charged. A storm wave of suspense rolled over the Knight, and he recognised the taste, all too well. Gods! If I don't do something the boy'll turn before he's four. He put out his hand, pushed the droids away. They skidded backwards, repulsor fields sparking, metal pincers waving like comical lobsters. Lysander's tantrum stopped instantly. The small mouth fell open, his eyes round. Force-energy imploded, centreing itself again - the storm of darkness gone as if it had never been. "Do it again!" Just for fun, he pushed the intrusive, metallic, lifeless things all the way to the far wall; in increments, Lysander crowing with laughter, waving his tiny fists in imitation of the Jedi hand gestures, pretending to be what he could easily become. Giggling, Andi looked almost normal. Surely he could still be saved. Surely the dependency his father had encouraged in him, the isolation, the lovelessness and despair, could all be wiped away with time. Surely, Qui-Gon thought - with a clutch of dread - it wasn't possible to mark a child so deeply by the age of two that he was irredeemable? "Would you like to learn to do that, Andi?" "Yes please!" "I'd have to take you to a different place." Lysander stopped bouncing; the preternatural stillness coming over him again. He looked round his room solemnly - the polished metal floors, defeated scurry of droids, the pit of emptiness which was his bedroom. "Yes please." "Away from your daddy." Qui-Gon sat down on the edge of the coverlet and watched the life drain out of Lysander's face; watched the boy curl into a ball of misery, just as he had been in the gardens. Unsurprising, really - he had just cut the heart out of the boy's world. "Daddy wouldn't let me go. Dada love me." The child's faith hurt. Because he was wrong. It had not escaped Qui-Gon's notice that he had been banished to the gardens, that Lysander had been told to wait in the gardens - that their meeting had been engineered. The Governor had placed his son in Qui-Gon's path like a bribe, or a trap, and certainly in making this offer he was doing exactly what the man wanted. Why? Who could fathom the reasons of such a father? Perhaps he was to be tempted with something he couldn't have. Perhaps tomorrow he was to have his face rubbed in the fact that here was one child he could not save. The Jedi would be punished for not choosing the father by being denied the son. Or - he tried to be generous - perhaps the Governor wanted his child to have the opportunity, but couldn't bring himself to ask? He splayed his hand on the child's bent back and sent a wave of comfort through the Force. Whatever the Governor's plan in this, the boy should be taken away from it before he could be hurt worse. At the feeling of warm power Lysander uncurled, amazed. He crept onto Qui-Gon's knee and reached up to pull a lock of hair, hard. He was as awkward as though he had never been held, and when Qui-Gon revenged himself by locking big hands round him, lifting him in the air and tickling him soundly, he had to be given permission to laugh. Put down, he kicked the blankets in Qui-Gon's face, giggled, "Will you be there?" "Yes." "OK then." He closed his eyes and fell asleep in the knotted tangle of sheets with the sudden abandon of a baby. Casually sprawled, mouth open, long ebony lashes shadowing the suave curve of his cheeks, he was at one and the same time a single unimportant child among billions, and the Living Force personified, infinitely precious. "Are you sure about this, Master?" Gem had been uncharacteristically silent for a long time. Obviously thinking, "The kid's not exactly normal. Do you really think he could ever become a Jedi?" "No, I'm not sure. He is damaged, it is a risk. But I have to try." She gave him that advice again, grinning; "There is no try." Ample time to ponder that in his youth had left him with the conclusion he handed her now. "Perhaps, but it's still better to fail at doing good than to succeed at doing nothing." "Little Lice is right. His daddy will never let him go." |
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